The spark for the New Educational and Research Alliance (newERA) emerged from a three-day conference called the Emerging Technology and Broadening Participation Summit held June 5-7, 2023, at Binghamton University. It was organized by Binghamton’s Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science.
“Binghamton has a reputation of being a great research university, and some of our HBCUs are on the verge of becoming great in some areas,” says N. Joyce Payne, founder of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. “This was a prime opportunity to bring the two communities together to start the conversation.”
More than a dozen faculty members and students from the six HBCUs toured the college’s laboratories and met in research affinity groups with Watson faculty to discuss collaborations.
“After a full year of brainstorming and planning with Dr. Payne and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, I am very happy to see this come to fruition. It is a groundbreaking alliance,” says Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Donald Hall.
“In the SUNY system, we’ve never had an outreach effort like this, so Binghamton is leading the way. We are approaching this in the sense of true collaboration — we’re equal partners in this, each bringing our own strengths and our own weaknesses, our own needs and our own aspirations. I think that bodes well for the future.”
Watson College Dean and Distinguished Professor Krishnaswami "Hari" Srihari is collaborating with newERA’s core team that includes Payne, Mark Frohman of Frohman Consulting Corp. and Dean Dawit Haile of Virginia State University to develop a detailed plan to grow and develop the partnerships to ensure the momentum from the summit is built upon.
“We are only at the beginning of what we expect to be a long a fruitful relationship,” Srihari says. “Everyone at Watson College is excited to meet our colleagues at these HBCUs and eager to see where we can innovate together.”
As the partnership unfolds, it will undoubtedly lead to new avenues for groundbreaking research and nurture the next generation of diverse talent. Each collaboration presents an opportunity to achieve great things by working together and leveraging each institution’s strengths.
